Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus today urged people to vote for the political parties that will return Grameen Bank to its original shape.
This YunusCentre.org photo on April 17 this year shows Muhammad Yunus delivering a lecture at Georgetown, Washington. Yunus, who is in Malaysia attending the fifth Global Social Business Summit, today urged people to vote for political parties that are sympathetic to Grameen Bank.
“People should vote for the parties that will come forward to make the amendment,” founder of the Nobel Peace Prize winning microlender told a group of Bangladeshi reporters at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
Prof Yunus is now in the Malaysian capital, which is hosting the fifth Global Social Business Summit which kicked off today.
His comments came two days after the parliament passed legislation, replacing the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983, which has been governing the microcredit bank for three decades, with the Grameen Bank Act 2013.
The banker to the poor said the passage of the new law was very unfortunate for Grameen Bank, which was created as a bank owned and managed by poor women.
“Its legal structure did not allow any government interference of any kind, except for regulatory oversight. But the new law has created scopes for the government to interfere,” he said.
The only alternative left for the supporters and well-wishers of Grameen Bank was to convince people that a major mistake was committed through the enactment of the new law, he stressed.
“We will have to tell people that we have to correct this mistake. They should elect such parties that will make this wrong right. There is no other alternative.”
Prof Yunus however said he does not think that the bank would come to a halt immediately just because of the new law.
“But its activities will be disrupted whenever the government exercises its power. Then the bank will not be able to operate in the way it has operated so far. Whenever the government penetrates into the bank, the trouble will begin.”
The government transformed the ordinance into the law following a Supreme Court order to turn all ordinances passed during the military regimes in the 1980s into new laws.
“There would have no problem had the government just translated the ordinance into Bengali and make a new law keeping the provisions as they are, as has been done in case some of other ordinances. But the government has not done so,” the Bangladesh economist said, referring to changes to the original ordinance that give the central bank more authority over the bank.
Themed “Social business to change the world”, the three-day annual event opened in the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur.
This year 600 participants from around 40 countries are attending the fifth edition of the Summit. From Bangladesh, where the idea was originated by Prof Yunus, 107 participants are taking part.
Source: The Daily Star
